EVERALD@LARGE

Having been born in 1931, I am fast running out of years but I have several strong commitments in life to which I am continuing to make a significant effort.

As Chairman of Longevity Alliance Australia, I intend to achieve positive results in several crucial areas of Ageing which will impact heavily on Australian Life when the ageing of the population reaches its peak in 2050 (when I do not expect to be around)

Progress in these areas can turn Longevity into an economic and social asset.

However, the creation of visionary infrastructure is also a passion of my life, particularly with regard to railways and water, both of which have been massively neglected in the development of the nation.

And I share with my friend, John Thompson, a passion to restore the environment in Rural Australia while advancing its productivity and liveability in innovative ways.

Also shared with my colleague, David Muir, is a determination to upgrade the Australian Constitution which is now out of date as well as have voluntary assisted dying legislation implemented in Queensland.

Similarly, I am involved with many good people in the advocacy of Progressive Christianity and the Interfaith Movement both of which should be cornerstones of Australian Life.

I should also mention that I get huge pleasure in writing new books and in travelling the world with Helen.

More details of this can be read by clicking on the ABOUT page in this website.

I look forward to a dialogue with you on my articles plus issues you would like to raise with me

Hi ALL, I’ve been waiting keenly to hear more from Trev. re his Concept. Has ANYONE heard anymore from him? What was your reaction to his concept Everald? Hope we do..at least he IS
capable of THOUGHT!!!!

What if I can give you the billions of dollars that you need ?
What I’m going to tell you might seem strange, too good to believe, but it’s just common sense and simple business. It’s thinking outside the square. What if you were given the chance to eliminate most poverty and unemployment, permanently, and it doesn’t cost one cent from the government, or charity? Would you take that chance?
Most of my working life has been in the building industry. Eventually I owned a couple of timber yards in Brisbane and Ipswich and sold them before the GFC hit, and retired a couple of years later. I used to do my own book keeping so I could keep an eye on my accountant’s figures, so I know basic accountancy.
When the GFC hit I watched people suffer, because of something that others caused, and it made me furious, but there was nothing I could do. Businesses closed, people lost their jobs and homes and some even suicided. Two years ago I saw a video on the internet with this man who was 98 years old and he said “We are doing it all wrong and need to start again, but do it smarter and fairer”. It got me thinking, what if we could fix all this?
Being from the building industry, and into renewable energy and vegetable gardening, I looked at planning a new small community, 50-500 people that could mostly look after themselves.
What if I could bring the house and land price down very low, but charge an extra $50,000 for working capital?
What if I was able to throw in free food, free electricity, free water, and free transport to and from work, taking kids to and from school for free, and free trips to and from the nearest towns and cities in seven seater electric cars?
What if you made these communities in semi-rural areas, 10-20 minutes from all towns and cities( except the capital cities), with lakes to trap the rain, grow vegetables in greenhouses and plant fruit trees instead of natives or ornamentals?
What if you had a farm next door or nearby, where you had lots more fruit trees, free range chooks, pigs and dairy cattle to supply the community?
What if I could lower the cost of living so much, that now one full time job will cover two people?
With my working capital, I can buy simple low skilled businesses and now supply the jobs, with the profit flowing back to the community.
What if everyone 15 to 75+ had a job if they wanted it, even someone in a wheelchair?
What if aged care meant you stayed in your own home or in that community?
What if I gave the businesses, electric cars, farm and everything back to the community, and have it run by a body corporate elected from the community?
What if people were able to buy their own house, pay it off and not rent, and had a job for their whole working life?
Now look at the big picture. If we could employ most people, the unemployed, people on disability who can work, single parents who can work while their kids are at school, and the elderly who still want to work?
This will cut $60 to $100 billion off the welfare budget, per year, every year. These people now don’t need welfare from the government, but will be paying tax and spending money they didn’t have before.
When governments make cuts to their budgets people are going to suffer. They don’t have to.
What if you could use some of this money to do the Bradfield Scheme, to drought proof the eastern half of Australia? What if we then use, as a model, the hydro-electric power station at Wivenhoe Dam, to do it all over Australia and cut our carbon emissions by 30-40% within 10 years?
I’ve seen and priced the land, a normal and sensible home, solar panels, small wind turbines and deep cell batteries, water tanks, electric cars, and lots of cheap suitable businesses for sale right now. This isn’t rocket science. Everything is there right now.
What if you had the money to do everything on your wish list?
This is just a broad outline of my idea. This is also the tip of a large iceberg of ideas and information I have.

It is all possible but not in a modern democracy. It would be taking away peoples freedom of choice. What you have outlined could happen if there was agreement by leaders in nation. But now with free trade and one world government backed by huge business money no country can determine its own economy. But take hope the bible promises that Jesus Christ is coming back to take the reigns of world leadership for one thousand years. Then you will see what just and fair government can do. This is my belief and I wait for it excitedly. It won’t be long now. Tim Janes

Thanks Tim for your comment.
I’m looking at doing this with individual communities, that are free and independant from each other. This is about people not relying on governments to help them, but being able to help themselves. There will always be people the employers don’t want, the young with no experience, the middle aged and elderly, and the disabled.
This is not just an idea, but a plan I’m actually going to do. I’ve worked out most of the details, even finance. People don’t have to suffer in poverty, decade after decade waiting for Jesus Christ to return. Even he had compassion for the poor.
Cheers
Trev

Maybe my situation is somewhat different to yours. I am without reputation to current political leaders in my ‘retirement’. I have been a great advocate of decentralisation in AUS, but I find a lot of rhetoric but not much conviction to action. I think your local community plan sounds great and I support it. I would even consider being part of it if the opportunity were there. Examples of such exists in other parts of the world one of which comes to mind in Israel one mile from Gaza.

There is no such thing as freedom of choice as we all have to with respect live within the law set by governments and law makes. So one needs to choose carefully how to exercise ones freedom of choice. We are all born with freedom of choice, It’s how we use it for good or bad. Do the right thing by your self, friends, family and society and you will have all the freedom of choice you need in abundance.

There Was (is?) a group on the Sunshine Coast who done something similar. They were a religious group and I know of them because they used to walk into the local catchment group and give them donations when “they had more cash than they needed”.
Unfortunately I didn’t get their details.

It takes a certain mindset to get infrastructure put in the right places to really benefit the future. Unfortunately our pollies have a two-year (long-term) mentality to get re-elected, and infrastructure does not fit this short-term quick and high return on investment mindset.

Privatising infrastructures provides a short term false gain as the essential planning and maintenance framework is stripped out and discarded, and several years later these previously efficient infrastructures collapse because management has short-term profit before long-term sustainability.

Australia needed fast broadband transport and quick rail transport to be rolled out 2000 – 2010, and of course it never happened. Our Rail alignments are still based on 1860’s technology to follow the contours of the hills.

Our Federal Government is still stuck in the 1990s, thinking that Road Freight transport is the future, when we now know that fuel prices are rising at 9.0% pa (from 2012), and this is making distance Road Freight trasport totally unsustainable. (From about 1970 until 2012 fuel prices rose at about 6.5% pa; from about 1932 until 1970 fuel prices rose by about 4.1% pa. These prices follow a nominal 40-year 2.5% step sequence since about 1896.)

We have virtually no (very inexpensive) fibre cable grid in the country as in the capital cities – and our very foolish Federal Government is now rolling out expensive and short-term Satellite connectivity to country areas that could be readily connected by inexpensive Fibre to the Premises in well over 99.3% of all cases – be they urban (cities / towns / villages) or non-uban (homesteads).

Everald, your suggestion in your recent newsletter that one might stand on Possession Island with Captain James Cook in 1770 (the only English Captain to come to Australia and not play in a Test!) and look ahead 250 years omitted one other current anomaly that should be addressed and corrected ASAP.. Why does a country with less than 25 million people need 5 time zones for half of the year? A minor adjustment to A.E.S.T would ensure that 3 time zones 12 months of the year would ‘significantly enhance the Australian economy with uniform time zones across the eastern States’ as is the present thinking of the Chamber of Industry and Commerce of Queensland.

Time zones are the least of our worries and makes very little difference to ones lives personal or business. I am a business person and also have travelled all over Australia.
There are much more important things to worry over. How are we going to survive in the future with current attitudes of the governments sending us all to the poor house.

I just read your piece on why Hockey should not have sacked you. The most substantial take-home for me is that the report you prepared that Swann commissioned is to be destroyed. I guess there may be institutional reasons for that, but is there any way you can go the route of the Climate Change Authority? If you have a good email subscription base, you could at least put the option out there… and the Australian Greens would, I am sure, be open to supporting your work; it’s about social justice.

Hi Everald,
I have read you home page today and would like to comment on the Inland Railway. You might recall in 1993 I ran for Labor in one of the safest National Party seats in Australia in Parkes and nearly made it. Loosing out after nearly two weeks of counting and waiting for postal votes. If I had made it, the Inland Railway was one of my pet projects.I again ran in two further elections.
During that period of time, there were many meetings about the railway and the economic benefits to communities along its path. Local Governments, transport groups and communities in general fully supported the project and at the time I thought the project was gaining momentum.
Hear we are twenty years later and how much further have we come? Not very far.

During my election involvement, I had a number of discussions about water and how the diversion of coastal waters to Inland Australia would improve THE NATIONS economic situation substantially. If fact Ernie Bridge the Chairman of The Watering Australia Foundation and Member for the Kimberleys came to Dubbo and had a number of meetings and gained the support of many. Since that time Ernie has passed on and so to has the WAF Patron in Slim Dusty.

I have now reached 70 years of age and am wondering where Australia’s future lies. I do know that the Inland Railway and the provision of water to inland Australia would certainly make this country a great powerhouse especially in the provision of food to the world.

Over recent years I had hoped that either Labor or the Coalition would put in place policies like those mentioned, that would take us forward economically. This has not happened.

The recent elections have shown how disgruntled the Australian public are. Here,s hoping
that very soon Australia,s Governments will investigate further and take on board some of the policies mentioned.

I agree wholeheartedly with your homepage comments. Strangely I have never read your home webpage although I get your newsletter monthly and have sometimes added my pennyworth.
To me its almost like Australia is a cursed nation with the politics that go on here. There have been people of great vision and entrepeneurship in Australia and available capital has not been a problem. It is political philosophy and downright ineptitude that has killed many a great opportunity. Successive Australian governments have always been the starters of inflation by raising taxes or excise of some sort to push up the costs of the private sector. If we get a boom the governments take the cream and prohibit reinvestment. I am praying for a political ‘miracle’ that will see this endless cycle of Labor / Liberal pendulum end. The greatest hindrance to optimism regarding my prayer is the media and the majority’s gullibility to it.
Inter Faith Activities is something I am not convinced about. Interdenominationalism among Christians I have been involved with myself, but with the emergence of strong intolerant faiths it is not possible to peacefully coexist.
Tim Janes